Rogue on the loose

A PROTEIN found in the blood of cancer patients can behave just like a prion,
the infectious agent that causes mad cow disease. Its discoverers think it might
help cancers spread throughout the body.

“We always tend to think of cancer as a genetic disease, caused by
mutations,” says Mike Scott, a prion researcher at the University of California,
San Francisco. “But there is this distinct possibility that there might be some
prion-like mechanism involved in at least some tumours.”

This is the first example, he says, of a prion-like protein in mammals that
doesn’t belong to …

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